“Islamic Europe? Inevitable – and Terrific!”

One week back in 2007, I was paid a not inconsiderable sum of money to fly first class from Oslo to Washington, D.C., on the Tuesday and to fly back on the Thursday, so that I could give a hour-long lunchtime talk on the Wednesday to an audience of American and international diplomats....

My first doubts in this respect began to arise only moments after the event kicked off. Sitting through the morning's panels, I heard one highly credentialed individual after another – professors, politicians, and retired and active diplomats from various countries – join in predicting a glowing future for Western Europe. Socially and economically, they all agreed, prospects looked a lot brighter for Western Europe than for America. Not a single one of the dozen or so panelists diverged from this consensus.

... I was introduced and, from a lectern up front, proceeded to serve up a condensed version of the argument of my 2006 book While Europe Slept. I described the rise of Islam in Western Europe, the failure of Muslims to integrate, and the consequent increase in gang crime, welfare dependency, forced marriage, sharia-run enclaves, and numerous other ills – the usual litany. Western Europe, I maintained, was undergoing a radical metamorphosis that, unless drastic action were taken, would ultimately bring its liberal democracies crashing down....

Walter Laqueur – the distinguished elder historian, world-class Europe expert, and sometime professor at places like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago – had just published a book (The Last Days of Europe) in which he made arguments that were essentially identical to my own....

I recall, for instance, an omnibus review in the Financial Times of While Europe Slept, Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia, Melanie Phillips’s Londonistan, and Walter Laqueur’s The Last Days of Europe – four books by authors with very different backgrounds but making very similar arguments....

Cut to 2018. As it turns out, it's not Europe but Islam in Europe that's been moving from strength to strength. As the number of terrorist atrocities, mass car burnings, and gang riots and rapes across Western Europe climbs relentlessly, it's harder and harder to hold up Europe as “a new lamp unto the nations.” Consequently, the elite's message about Islam in Europe has begun to shift. Only the day before yesterday, it seemed, they were telling us – and many of them, to be sure, are still telling us – that it's preposterous to suggest that Western Europe's present order is on the verge of being undone. But now at least some of them are starting to sing a different tune. Yes, they admit, Islam is taking over Western Europe – but hey, there's no reason to worry about it!...

Now our warnings are beginning to be treated as received truths, even as those of us who issued the warnings continue to be treated as pariahs. For the nature of our perceived offense is starting to shift, too. These days, more and more, the crime isn't predicting a Muslim takeover of Western Europe. The crime is complaining about it instead of humbly and obediently adapting to it.